President Obama commits to tackle carbon pollution from power plants in 2012, only days after unveiling a new plan to deeply cut carbon from cars and light trucks.

Last week, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson announced plans for establishing new carbon pollution limits on the nation’s power plants. This is good news. Just last month NWF had voiced serious concerns
that these efforts were going to be delayed indefinitely. Significantly, the new schedule gets the Obama Administration back on
track to tackle the nation’s biggest source of air pollution that causes
climate change.

The new rules on carbon pollution from coal-fired plants will utilize section 111 of
the Clean Air Act. This provision of law requires EPA to establish
federal air pollution standards to control air pollutants from
stationary sources (read here coal-fired power plants) which cause or
contribute significantly to the air pollution that harms our health and
wildlife. The standards are also intended to promote use of the most
modern air pollution control technologies so our power plants stay up to
date.

Right now, our nation's power plants can belch carbon dioxide pollution into our air without any limits. A recent piece in the New York Review of Books by Yale economist William Nordhaus aptly describes why it is urgent that we address this source of carbon pollution:

[The]
burning coal is very dirty, releasing both conventional pollutants and
greenhouse gases. Per unit of energy, coal emits 27 percent more CO2
than oil and 78 percent more CO2 than natural gas. . . . In the
aggregate, the emissions of CO2 from coal-fired electricity- generating
facilities are the largest single industrial source of greenhouse gas
emissions in the United States. They make up one third of all emissions
in an industry that constitutes only about one half of one percent of
the US economy! Moreover, studies indicate that reducing
coal-fired generation is the least expensive way for the US to reduce
its carbon emissions in the near term (emphasis added).

The
new pollution limits will be established into two parts. In January,
the administration will propose limits that any new power plant must
meet before it can be constructed. NWF expects that the critically
important second part of the standards - new carbon pollution limits on
the nation’s existing power plants - will be proposed later in the
Spring of 2012.

This is where you come in! The
public will have an opportunity to (and needs to) comment in support of
setting strong air pollution standards that reduce carbon pollution starting in January.
Polluters will surely go all out to push back on this effort and we need
to stop them in their tracks.